The Green Agenda In American Politics

Organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth are familiar to anyone with an interest in environmental protection. As activist groups, they played by the same rules for years. But in 1994, the rules changed. With the Republican takeover of Congress, environmental groups faced sweeping changes in federal policies that threatened the enforcement of environmental laws. As these organizations intensified their efforts to meet these challenges, they also altered their electoral strategies and political spending patterns. This book traces those actions and shows what they mean for the future of environmentalism in the political arena. While environmental advocacy groups have become bigger and better funded in recent years, so have the corporate interests that compete with them for the attention of public and politicians. The Green Agenda in American Politics offers a new look at environmental advocacy that focuses on contemporary lobbying, electioneering, and agenda setting in this new context. Drawing on interviews with activists from a wide range of organizations, Robert Duffy describes what environmental groups actually do when lobbying officials or the public. He examines activity at both national and state levels to emphasize their growing use of websites, email, and action alert networks to conduct more sophisticated grassroots campaigns, and he shows how they are devoting more funds to unregulated forms of spending such as independent expenditure, issue advocacy advertising, and public education campaigns. Duffy also tracks emerging trends in interest group politics and provides an overview of activism through the early 1990s. He then documents the emergence of more aggressive action after 1994, such as providing campaign services to candidates and mounting voter registration drives. He also shows how state and local groups have begun to play more important roles in the wake of the rollback of federal environmental regulations. Brimming with new insights into interest group lobbies in general and contemporary environmental groups in particular, Duffy's book opens a new window on the influence of Big Money in the supposedly democratic electoral process.

A hallmark of the past 100 years has been the greening of political thought and practice. Today, there are green political parties, green organizations, and green consumer goods, all of which show how our decisions to organize, donate, and consume have been infused with green politics, which in many ways is all about values. Green politics has grown in the popular imagination as well. Every day there are headlines about climate change, impacts of resource extraction, or chemical pollution in poor neighborhoods. Underlying all of these stories are classic political questions about power, representation, and ultimate values. Green Politics: An A-to-Z Guide covers the availability and distribution of such resources as energy and how they impact economic development, domestic politics, and international cooperation and conflict. Other issues of equal importance to be covered include watershed resources (what happens when countries share a river and one country siphons off or pollutes waters before they reach other countries), other natural resources (for instance, industrialized countries attempting to dictate to developing countries about rainforest resources, whaling countries versus those seeking total bans on whaling as an industry), air pollution, global health and epidemiology (e.g., constraining the spread of potential pandemics, radioactive fall-out across countries from nuclear accidents like Chernobyl). From A-to-Z, the politics of these and similar "green" issues are thoroughly explored via 150 signed entries. Vivid photographs, searchable hyperlinks, numerous cross references, an extensive resource guide, and a clear, accessible writing style make the Green Society volumes ideal for classroom use as well as for research.

Revised to include new discussions on climate justice, green political parties, climate legislation and recent environmental struggles.

Once one of America's most popular television meteorologists, Sussman believes that the environmental movement is a Trojan horse in an ongoing war to end America's status as a superpower.

When Agendas and Instability in American Politics appeared fifteen years ago, offering a profoundly original account of how policy issues rise and fall on the national agenda, the Journal of Politics predicted that it would “become a landmark study of public policy making and American politics.” That prediction proved true and, in this long-awaited second edition, Bryan Jones and Frank Baumgartner refine their influential argument and expand it to illuminate the workings of democracies beyond the United States. The authors retain all the substance of their contention that short-term, single-issue analyses cast public policy too narrowly as the result of cozy and dependable arrangements among politicians, interest groups, and the media. Jones and Baumgartner provide a different interpretation by taking the long view of several issues—including nuclear energy, urban affairs, smoking, and auto safety—to demonstrate that bursts of rapid, unpredictable policy change punctuate the patterns of stability more frequently associated with government. Featuring a new introduction and two additional chapters, this updated edition ensures that their findings will remain a touchstone of policy studies for many years to come.

"Mark Green and Michele Jolin look to 2009 as the beginning of an era of renewal and progressive governance in America. Change for America presciently and insightfully offers specific ideas for what our next President can do to revitalize our nation and restore our standing abroad." -- President Bill Clinton It was an election about change, but how will that change actually happen? The result of a collaboration between the Center for American Progress Action Fund (the advocacy arm of Washington's leading-edge progressive think-tank led) and the New Democracy Project's Mark Green, this comprehensive volume is written by over sixty leading policymakers, scholars and advocates. Based on four core values -- of democracy, security through diplomacy, opportunity and a greener world -- Change for America offers scores of solutions how to repair our broken government and create an enduring progressive era. "The Center for American Progress Action Fund and Mark Green have assembled some of our nation's best minds, and their best ideas, into a book is packed with innovative, practical, and progressive solutions that will help take America in a New Direction." -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi "These thoughtful essays offer a progressive way forward for the vast majority of Americans who hope their government works for the many, not just the few." -- Senator Ted Kennedy "We don't just need a transition -- we need a transformation. Mark Green and Michele Jolin's encyclopedia of change offers a brilliant roadmap for the 44th President." -- Senator John Kerry "This is one of the most important books to be published this year. It's a handbook for restoring the New Deal's social compact with our citizens over the first '100 Days' and the next 1360." -- James Roosevelt, Jr. "Change for America is brilliant, timely and practical and teems with hard earned wisdom and common sense." -- Michael Eric Dyson

This Element explores the growing party divisions on the environment in the United States. It draws upon quantitative and qualitative data from several decades of national and state politics. The study contributes theory to the party position change literature, showing that interest groups change parties, but in turn are changed by them. In the 1970s the characteristics that predicted voters' attitudes on the environment also predicted legislators' votes. Yet as environmentalists and their opponents aligned with parties, officials had incentives to set their own views aside to represent new party constituencies. Influence flowed in both directions, however. Environmentalists were drawn to the Democrats as they confronted GOP-linked business lobbies. Environmentalists' resulting need to cooperate with other groups close to Democrats led them to change their positions. Although environmentalists were long unwelcoming to minorities, they embraced immigration reform, allied with unions on trade, and worked with civil rights lobbies and labor in battles over judicial nominations. The Element concludes with discussion of how the current party alignment on the environment might change.

This book describes and analyzes the educational agendas of major political organizations. It begins with the outrage of evangelical parents at what they perceive to be the anti-Christian curriculums of public schools. Sparked by religious zeal and working with the well-oiled machinery of the Christian Coalition, Evangelical Christians are affecting schools and American politics. Bordering the region of the religious right is the shadowy world of conservative think tanks that buy intellectuals to sell a school reform agenda of free market competition between public, private, and for-profit schools to the public and politicians. The Republican Party is strongly affected by the demands of the religious right and the powerful influence of the conservative think tanks. The author explains that the educational programs of George Bush's presidency reflected the plans of conservatives, while the Christian Coalition dominated the 1996 National Republican Platform. Bill Clinton and the New Democrats broadened the appeal of the Democratic Party to middle class voters by promising to increase chances to attend college and to provide lifelong opportunities to upgrade job skills. Education -- the New Democrats proclaim -- is the answer for growing inequality in wealth, insecurity of employment in a world of corporate restructuring, and competition in a global marketplace. The book continues in the splintered arena of the leftist politics. Overwhelmed by New Democrats and the political right, Jesse Jackson clings to the hope of fulfilling the liberal-educational agenda of the War on Poverty. Also feeling under siege by attacks from anti-abortionists and the political right, the National Organization for Women continues its objective of ensuring that women have an equal opportunity for admissions to schools and participation in school programs, and that school materials are free of gender bias and give women positive role models. Gaining support from progressives who are dissatisfied with Republicans and Democrats, the Green Party offers a unique educational agenda of democratic control and ideological diversity. The story concludes with the cultural politics of Indiocentricity and Afrocentricity. From the religious right to the New Democrats, politicians are condemning attempts to change the cultural foundation of U.S. schools.

Catastrophic climate change overshadows the present and the future. Wrenching economic transformations have devastated workers and hollowed out communities. However, those fighting for jobs and those fighting for the planet have often been at odds. Does the world face two separate crises, environmental and economic? The promise of the Green New Deal is to tackle the threat of climate change through the empowerment of working people and the strengthening of democracy. In this view, the crisis of nature and the crisis of work must be addressed together—or they will not be addressed at all. This book brings together leading experts to explore the possibilities of the Green New Deal, emphasizing the future of work. Together, they examine transformations that are already underway and put forth bold new proposals that can provide jobs while reducing carbon consumption—building a world that is sustainable both economically and ecologically. Contributors also debate urgent questions: What is the value of a federal jobs program, or even a jobs guarantee? How do we alleviate the miseries and precarity of work? In key economic sectors, including energy, transportation, housing, agriculture, and care work, what kind of work is needed today? How does the New Deal provide guidance in addressing these questions, and how can a Green New Deal revive democracy? Above all, this book shows, the Green New Deal offers hope for a better tomorrow—but only if it accounts for work’s past transformations and shapes its future.